


The Offer

by Sphinxriddle



Series: Fragments of Voss [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Dark Knight Quest (Final Fantasy XIV) Spoilers, Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward Spoilers, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood Spoilers, Gen, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-13 16:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21168116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sphinxriddle/pseuds/Sphinxriddle
Summary: Warrior of Light Danica Voss reflects on the offer Fray once gave her.





	The Offer

It started with, in a way, myself. Some fractured part of me, of my rage and anguish and hatred at the world and what it had done to me. To my family. To my home. Some parts made manifest when I found that stone on that body, the actual Fray’s body. I wish I could say I don’t remember the day, but by some curse of the echo or my own pained mind or just cruel misfortune I doubt I’ll ever forget. I walked through the streets of Ishgard, still covered in the blood of the best man I’ve ever known, perhaps has ever existed. I had hoped to make it to the Forgotten Knight, Nald'Thal knows I couldn’t face the Fortemps as I was then, and just lose myself somehow. To sleep, to tears, hells I considered the drink and I don’t even like alcohol.

But instead I touched that rock and there they were. Standing before, tall and dark, as angry as I was but didn’t dare voice. Offering me vengeance, justice, truth, and most of all...Rest. I honed my rage to a razor’s edge under my own tutelage, learned not to fear it, but to embrace it. It was a useful emotion after all, unlike sorrow and sadness that did naught but bind to my bones and make it hard to move, to think. Anger, anger I could strike on. I could move on. I could topple primals with. 

Even rage, however, couldn’t stop the bone gnawing exhaustion that ate at me. Eats at me. Even now. Or the fear really, of once again being so powerless to stop everything from being taken away from me again. Fray knew this, and they also knew an answer to it. To both of them.

Exhaustion would only eat at me so long as I could not rest, and how could I rest with naught but quest after quest, realm saving mission after realm saving mission piled upon me by the “benevolence” of the Mother Crystal and every Tom, Dick and Yayahapa in Eorzea. Ysayles death showed me the truth. There would be no rest for us Warriors of Light, no simple retirement where I could live out my days as an Innkeeper like I always wanted to, only a painful death after a painful life. 

Fear would only haunt me so long as I had things to lose. What was worse than, the cruel slow and constant eating away at those I cared for by the universe, taking them brutally, suddenly, but never all at once, Or a quick, purposeful, removal of their presence from my life. Not unlike ripping a band-aid off. Fray chose the later, and honestly, if my leaving didn’t create so much more work, so many more burdens, so would I.

That is what they offered me in the end. The knowledge that if I so chose, I could walk into the sunset and find some tiny village far away that didn’t know my name or my story and just be Danica again. Danica and her stories and maybe even the Inn I set out to open when I first started adventuring. 

It took every ounce of resolve in my body not to, and even then I’m sure the only thing that kept that solid was my desire to dance among Ser Zephirin’s entrails and feast upon his heart for what he did to Haurchefant. Violent imagery to avenge a violent deed. Blood for blood. As always is the way of things. 

I thought, maybe, after that was finished I could rest. Not on my laurels but on a bed, alone, and let my grief pour forth from me without having to use it as a weapon. I was wrong. Nidhogg stole that hope and my dearest friend. Again the pain rippled through me, and alone, nay alone with Midgardsormr, I screamed myself hoarse in agony. At least there it was a burden to no one. I’ve never wanted to cause more work than I needed to. Take up more space than was absolutely required. 

When Estinien was freed and the wyrm banished, I thought then too, that I might get to rest. With those among my friends still alive around near me, together. Safe. Ishgard might not have been my home by birth, but it became home through sheer concentration of people. 

But then Estinien wandered off into the sunset, and home lost one of its numbers without even a note of goodbye. Hate reared its head again, and anger, and sadness, and exhaustion and God’s what I wouldn’t have given to run into him as he left. Beg him to take me with him away from it all. The obligations. The war. The endless blood I can’t seem to get out of my armor or off my hands anymore. 

I had liked to imagine that out of us all, he’d have understood. He wouldn’t have judged me harshly, or misunderstood that all I wanted to do was to sleep through the night for once. Without the visions that haunted me. First of my mother ordering me to run, like the coward I am. Then of Haurchefant, begging me to smile even if the portrait said smile painted was fake. At least when the wall was the forefront of my nightmares it was simply the screams of my countrymen congealed into one mass, and not their individual voices, waiting for me to find one I know among them. 

Meffrid was taken next, and I haven't slept more than three hours in one go since. We knew each other, before all of this. Before I found him again in Gridania with the scions. Before I ever stepped foot out of the Adventurer’s Guild in Ul’dah. Once again, my skill wasn’t enough to save him, to save them. Any of them. 

And the thought is there again, brighter than ever, to run. It’s there on the ship to Kugane, where I talked at length with the Captain Carvallain about the ocean and travel, freedom and adventure. It was there when I walked through the streets of the city, wondering if perhaps I could shirk my friends and disappear forever into the crowds. Free.

It never leaves, just as the reasons to stay remain as well. Alisaie, Alphinaud, Lyse, those who remain who I call friends. To leave would hurt them. To leave would burden them with the issues my absence creates. To leave would risk their lives, and as Conrad told me, and as I learned from pages and pages of military tactical manuals from my time with the flames. A good commander risks himself first, before he risks those who depend on him.

So when this Pirate of the Confederacy offers me a place among them, tells me of the Freedom I may find on the sea. Of the salvation from my burdens placed upon me. I consider it, and tis’ only Alisaie hand lightly tugging on my sleeve that reminds me of why I cannot. 


End file.
